This obvious conclusion is, in part, veiled from our eyes by two facts. One is that logic works slowly in human life. Take a transverse section of humanity at any particular moment, and it appears a mass of inconsistencies. It might almost suggest that there is no connexion at all between belief and practice. But the same appearance is not presented by human life in its long reaches. There you see how, in the {176} slow result, an alteration of belief involves an alteration of practice. Thus to take an example: at present our social conscience about the obligations of marriage, or about personal purity, or about suicide, unsatisfactory as it may appear to be to an earnest Christian, is still saturated with Christian sentiment which is the result of a prolonged impression left by Christian doctrine. If the doctrine were to pass out of the minds of Englishmen in general, after a generation or two there would be a weakening or destruction of the corresponding sentiment, and an abolition of what is at present an obstacle to the reign of sensual or selfish desires. But it takes some generations for the effect of any weakening of belief to make itself felt. There is another fact which veils from the eyes of people in general the real connexion between morals and doctrine. It is that it is largely mediate or indirect. The moral standard of the 'average man' is, unconsciously, kept up by the morals of the best men and women. For social opinion is with the majority the force which mainly influences their practice, and social opinion depends largely on leaders. 'It is when the best men cease trying that the world sinks back like lead.' Let anything {177} happen which should silence the moral effort of the best individuals, and disaster would be imminent. But this is exactly what would be the result if the best men and women were to cease to be Christian believers. It is the highest level of our common life that would be depressed. The result all round would be indirect, but it would be widespread and disastrous. I do not mean, or think, that this weakening of religious belief in the best men and women is occurring. I only instance its morally certain results to make apparent how the general bearing of religious beliefs on social practice is, in one way, veiled by its indirectness. But to St. Paul all this is self-evident. He sees quite clearly that Christianity is to be a new life, a new social and ethical manifestation in the world, because Christians believe that God has made plain to them in Jesus Christ His character, nature, and redemptive purposes, and has given, by His Spirit, a practical power to their wills to correspond with the truth revealed to their intelligences and hearts. So he proceeds from his exposition of the great doctrines of the Church of the Redemption to its practical moral consequences. [1] Rom. xii. 1. [2] 1 Cor. xv. 58. [3] Col. iii. 5, 12. [4] Heb. ii. 1; x. 19; xii. 1.